


Worms of Entropy

by drladybird



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Culture, Alien Mythology/Religion, Angst and Humor, Background Nakmor Kesh/Nakmor Vorn, Calix Corvannis is not actually in the story - he's dead, Director Tann is less awful than usual, Fantastic Racism, Fertility Issues, Gen, Past Abortion, The Talk, Worldbuilding, cw rotting meat, cw worms, set late game but discussion of mutiny, space stations malfunction in some fascinating ways!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-22 14:04:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16599296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drladybird/pseuds/drladybird
Summary: Kesh isn't having a good day. First she had to get the alien worms out of the plumbing, and now she has to explain internal fertilisation to Director Tann.On the bright side, he's helping with the worms.





	Worms of Entropy

I stayed on the Nexus. Stuck by the sinking ship while my grandfather, my boyfriend, and _the rest of my species in this galaxy_ buggered off to sort out their own future. Good choice in hindsight, but I regretted it pretty badly till Ryder Jr started kicking things into shape.

So why’d I stick round? Well, obviously I was hoping I could help with a peace deal down the track – you know, if people ever pulled their heads out of their arses, it’d be useful to have a semi-neutral party. (Wasn’t expecting Morda to be so competent!) And things looked a lot better after Kandros made it back, so I figured the boy could use some support.

But mainly, I stayed on this glorified tin can because, if I left, it’d literally fall to pieces.

The main dextro-meat vat wasn’t supposed to be my responsibility. Not directly. Theoretically I’m in a management role. Except Nissa wasn’t doing her job properly because she’d caught her husband in bed with her father. T’Sau wasn’t doing her job properly because she’d just found out what the Roekaar did to her daughter. And Calleo was doing most of their jobs plus about five other people’s. So none of them noticed the slow, subtle clogging of the nutrient and waste pipes on the main dextro-meat vat, until the culture medium stagnated and toxic bacteria built up and half the turians on the station got food poisoning.

I would have made Nissa fix what she’d broken, but she’d been arrested for punching her father. Would have made Calleo fix what he’d broken but he was being rehydrated in Medical. Tried to make T’Sau fix what she’d broken but she curled into a ball and started wailing, and her girlfriend started glowing ominously, and I left fast. Could have found another engineer and guilt-tripped them into helping out (overtime pay would have worked better, but I don’t control the paychecks…) but it sounded quicker and easier to investigate the pipes myself.

Besides, the access hatches for those pipes were unnecessarily heavy and kept sticking, and the daft design meant most of our engineers needed a crowbar to get them open, and there’s always the risk it’ll slam closed on your head, so I get a kick out of yanking them open with one hand and not bothering with the hard hat. I’ve spent seventy-eight years with Strux-type idiots calling me a useless runt… why’d the old man bother raising her, a trained pyjak’d be more use in a fight… maybe she’s some use for breeding, probably no use for that either… etc etc, so I like it when little soft aliens need my help lifting heavy things.

Even if it was three hours past the end of my shift. Turns out caffeine pills work fine on krogan – it just takes a few handfuls. Even if all the me-shaped waterproof coveralls were stuck in decon, and I had to cobble something together out of canvas and duct tape. Even if I wound up having to drain the vat, open it up, and climb in, in order to get a proper angle on the clogged sections of the pipes. The meat was hopelessly contaminated – my boots wouldn’t make it any more toxic.

It smelled wrong. Not just dextro-wrong but sick, rank wrong. I wouldn’t eat meat that smelled like that. Pity aliens have such a lousy sense of smell.

The vat was set into the floor, thirty metres by thirty metres by two metres deep, full of shelves that I had to squeeze between. The vat floor and all the shelves were covered in an inches-thick coat of generic dextro-meat cloned from three different species of farm animal. Bright blue with grey fat streaks, skinless, oozing, with pulsating blood vessels running through it and a tendency to spasm and bleed when I trod on it. I’m sure it tastes fine once it’s cut up and cooked – the generic levo-meat is delicious once you get past the red/green/purple streaks – but I still feel like meat should be made of dead animal and shouldn’t be _growing out of the walls._ Can’t take Tuchanka out of the girl.

Hard to find the pipe openings with everything covered in wriggling, stinking Generic Meat, and I put my screwdriver through a major blood vessel that dripped everywhere, but eventually I got the filter off the worst-clogged pipe and shone a torch up.  

Dark slithering lumps? The fuck?

Put my hand in and fished out a few dark blue leather-textured worms, an inch wide and a foot or two long and as thin as paper. Segmented but I couldn’t see any head or mouth. No legs or fins, but thick almost-black fleshy fringes along the sides.

I was staring at them and going _what the fuck_ when they started falling to bits in my hand. All the inch-long segments broke apart and squirmed away independently across the blue meat. And the pipe opening started raining disembodied segments and the occasional whole, thrashing worm. Worms started coiling round my ankles and I retreated up the nearest ladder before they could get into my boots.

So we have a pipe blockage made of self-dismembering alien fringeworms. Fringeworms weren’t mentioned in my education!

I sat on the floor, because most of the chairs on the Nexus won’t hold my weight, and I managed to get my omni-tool activated without covering it in worm-ooze and Generic Blood. Plumbing encyclopaedia, excellent… apparently those were _kisak_ from Palaven _._ Non-toxic. Harmless. Adapted to low oxygen environments. Soak up food through their skin. Common plumbing problem. Hard to totally eliminate, but vulnerable to a variety of chemicals that are non-toxic to sapient life. Which should be a relief, but judging from the plumbing article, turians hate kisak more than any reasonable person hates a worm. Am I missing something?

Called Sid Nyx, on the grounds that Kandros had better things to do. Should have gone with a voice-only call – she was sitting slumped on her bed and she was naked – but she had her plates closed over all the bits I didn’t want to see. That’s as good as underwear, right?

“Kesh?” she said. “This is important, right, not just chitchat? Because I just made it out of the toilet.”

“I need an urgent cultural consult. What, exactly, is the problem with kisak?”

She swore a lot – most of it didn’t translate – before yowling “You found _kisak_ in the meat vat?”

I pulled a segment of fringeworm off my knee and waved it at her. It wriggled.

She yelled something in Shelish about incest, cancer and spitbugs.

“Sid? Why are people terrified of these worm things? Should I be scared?”

“No.” She sighed. “They’re not dangerous, they’re just incredibly hard to kill. And gross. And a lot of the proper Palaveni types… kisak are traditionally associated with sin, ritual pollution, entropy, evil magic, general nastiness. No one’s going to eat the meat if there’s kisak in it!”

“We need to get rid of the meat anyway,” I pointed out. “Too much bacterial contamination.”

“I thought we’d left all the kisak back in the Milky Way! Dammit! I suppose next you’re going to tell me we didn’t leave behind entropy!”

“Sid, we’ve brought a few personifications of entropy with us, much scarier than a bunch of frilly worms… I can’t believe you have a taboo against these things! I’ve eaten far uglier things! Kisak look more edible than the instant mashed potatoes I got for lunch!”

She clutched at her belly. “KESH! I said I was still feeling delicate, OK?”

“Oh yeah… sorry.” OK, she didn’t seem to be running back to the toilet, might as well keep talking… “So aside from cultural connotations, the main meat vat’s a loss and we’ll need to sterilise it… we can use the contaminated meat for fertiliser, but it’ll take a few months to clone enough new meat cultures… shit. Looks like you’re back to eating yeast paste till further notice.”

“Yeast paste. With no fish sauce. Delicious!” She rubbed the back of her neck. “Did you know Tann was thinking about giving turians permission to reproduce? Guess my excitable coworkers’ll have to hold off a bit longer. Or pull a Kennedy. Hope they don’t pull a Kennedy, nobody needs that. We’ll live.”

And there will be so many meetings! So many people pissed off! So much yelling! I’ll live.

“Well, I’ll stay here,” I told him, “and I’ll keep unclogging the pipes, and when Calleo gets out of medical we’ll plan how to sterilise the vat and clone some new cultures ASAP. And we’ve nearly got the fish sauce vat running, if that helps, although we’ll have to divert resources now.”

She looked relieved. “Well, that’s _something_. You know it doesn’t count as civilisation if there’s no fish sauce. Seriously, is someone trying to start a Disgusting Vermin Zoo? First hamsters, and now kisak? _”_

Ah yes. _Hamsters._ Little round fluffy things from Earth, related enough to humans that they make good lab animals, but unrelated enough that the humans don’t feel guilty about it. They’re also great snacks (surprisingly few humans agree with me on that!)

Lucy Okonkwo (rumoured to be ex-Cerberus) cloned a bunch of hamsters to experiment on, and they escaped and bred exponentially and ate everything and got themselves classed as Dangerous Vermin. I’d have had more fellow feeling if they weren’t chewing on my pipes, on a space station.

Also that T’Vessa girl started a panic by failing xenobiology and blabbering about “larval grizzly bears.”

Okonkwo fixed what she’d broken by… inventing a species-specific virus.

Not as horrifying as it sounds. It killed the hamsters outright. They just dropped dead overnight – little limp fuzzies everywhere, in Tann’s favourite chair, falling out of the overhead storage, stuck and rotting inside the wall where the maintenance drones couldn’t get to them. See above regarding empathy.

“Look on the bright side,” I pointed out. “Kisak don’t bite holes in air hoses.”

“True, but they’re a lot harder to kill.” She grinned. “Well, my noble comrade, fare thee well on thy Great Kisak Hunt. Save me from the dread worms of entropy. I’m going to lie down till the room stops spinning.”

I sighed. “Stay orally hydrated, Sid. I’ll save you from the worms.”

“Staying orally hydrated, ma’am!” She pulled the blanket up to her neck and hung up.

…I could have run with Morda. I could be on Elaaden with Vorn, eating meat made from actual animals, and probably still unblocking a lot of pipes but at least he’d help and he’d stand by with a cuddle afterwards.

I miss Vorn so much. Why’d he exile himself and stay exiled? Because New Tuchanka needed him, obviously.

I’ve been through about half the men on Old Tuchanka – including Weyrloc Guld, obviously, I had to _pay_ him for his DNA – and I had to switch galaxies before I figured out the advantages of intellectual companionship, or even that sex works better when it’s with someone you respect. Me and Vorn – we work as a _team._ And I’m not talking about battle, which frankly both of us are crap at. Cheer each other up, calm each other down, bounce ideas back and forth till they make sense.

We’re the future, us together against the likes of Strux and Guld and William Spender. Give us a few hundred years and the whole Heleus Cluster’s going to respect krogan as real people.

Well, we’ve both got important jobs to do. I just hope he gets over the secrecy thing soon. Gramps isn’t that scary.

I emailed everyone important about the kisak, sent Vorn a “love you forever” email, and started unclogging the damn pipes.

Hard, revolting work. The meat had grown over most of the filters and it bled nonstop. The worms had some sort of fibrous skeleton that wound round machinery and jammed it. Worm chunks slithered up the pipes and caused blockages further up, so that I had to get longer tools to reach them or try to pressure-wash them down. Pieces of worm and meat and blood sprayed everywhere. Good thing I don’t have any dextro-protein allergies and I’m immune to whatever bug poisoned Sid and Calleo, because there was blood in my eyes and mouth.

Motivating mental image needed: I’m twelve, I just fixed the truck that Gramps thought was only good for scrap, he picks me up and dances around singing about how clever I am.

I’m hungry. Well, I can rest when the job’s done. I’ve got an ergonomic bed in my quarters and I’ve got three asari-issue nutrient bars left.

Asari nutrient bars aren’t motivating. They taste like flat chemical berry flavour and metal. Still, it’ll get the flavour of slightly decomposed copper-and-cobalt blood out of my mouth. Apparently kisak eggs can survive digestion, so I’d better use the Biohazardous Waste toilets for the next few days.

At least I’m not eating yeast paste.

Motivating mental image: that stew Gramps used to make from sourgrass and grains and dried fruit. Which is _not_ waiting in my quarters, but I’ll work harder if I pretend it is.

…He’s never going to cook that again. We left all the sourgrass back in the Milky Way.

Oh for all gods’ sake, Kesh, it’s just stew. Most of the Initiative lost their _family._

I wonder if Vorn can recreate sourgrass? Don’t humans have mating customs where the male gives the female nice plants?

Motivating mental image: imagine Vorn in my quarters, naked… no, between the unnatural meat and the _wrong_ smell and the worms crawling down my neck, my sex drive’s been pretty well nuked… imagine Vorn in my quarters offering me a massage.

Whir, whirr _clunk,_ damn it the thing’s jammed again, pull it out, unwrap worm guts, drop worm guts on meat floor, repeat.

We have tougher plumbing equipment, but if I use it, I might crack the pipes.

Whirr _clunk._ It’s starting to overheat.

“Excuse me? Kesh?”

I looked up and saw salarian feet. Looked much further up and saw Director Tann, holding a couple of cans and looking more worried than usual.

“Director? I thought you were asleep.”

“No no, I’ve already had enough sleep for one night. I read your email about the, ah, disaster. Oh dear.”

Well, I’d been fighting worms for long enough that talking to Number Eight sounded like a nice change. “Yep. Looks like it’s nutrient paste time for our turian population. Again.”

He nodded. “I take it they can’t go vegan?”

“Not possible. They’re primarily carnivorous, like you’d expect from the teeth.”

He looked confused. What, does he think turian mouthparts evolved to look scary? “Well. I suppose we can be extremely grateful that there’s enough nutrient paste to go round. Almost enough. Some of the lower priority people might need to spend a few weeks on short rations.”

Sid might lose a bit of weight? Eh, she’ll live. Not looking forward to explaining that to Vetra, though. “We’ll need a proper meeting tomorrow. With nutritionists.”

He rubbed his head. “Kesh, I’d like to… thank you… for taking this upon yourself. To perform this task.”

“Needed doing. Calleo outta medical yet?”

“Don’t know. I, uh, you’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty here. I wish the Nexus had six engineers with your work ethic.”

Better head him off before he starts that “you’re one of the good ones, like, an honorary real person!” shit again.

“You know where I grew up, Director. Back there, you slacked off, you died. Good training for this place.”

Damn machine’s still overheating at me. And I think the other one’s broken permanently. Galactic Plumbers Encyclopedia says if you put poison down a pipe full of kisak, they’ll die and calcify and stick to the pipe walls like little rocks. Is Number Eight planning to fetch me better equipment? Or can he kindly fuck off to… of course not his bed, that’s _me_ being species insensitive… his favourite documentary about how binocular vision is an essential prerequisite for civilisation?

“Ah. Kesh. I took the liberty of… bringing you dinner?”

Wait. What?

He’s holding a large _steaming_ canister. And a couple of smaller steaming canisters.

“It’s soup,” he said, “just the instant stuff, I’m afraid, and arau tea.”

Arau tea? The nice spicy stuff, with the stimulant effects I’m not resistant to yet?

“Right!” I said. “Thanks! Let me just get the… bits of worm off.”

I was _covered_ in worm. Even under the inadequate coverall, because the buggers wriggle. I looked like those pictures of old-time warriors chopping their way out of thresher maws, except blue and less glorious.

It took the decontamination showers to get me clean. Their waste water gets boiled and then space-frozen – that should kill any live worm bits that fall off. I chucked my canvas-and-duct-tape outfit in the Biohazardous Laundry box, and my soggy once-white-now-extremely-blue underwear on top. Instead I tied together two fluffy white towels to cover most of me from waist to knees. If that bothered Number Eight, he could leave the soup and go.

Fortunately, he didn’t complain, just handed me the soup and sat down and started drinking soup himself. It was... it was food, so I’m not complaining. It was soggy alien vegetables and soggier noodles, floating in mostly hot water and a bit of hydrolysed vegetable protein. The tea tasted of tannin and glucose.

Wouldn’t have been able to enjoy decent food anyway, not with the way the vat smelled.

“Thanks!” I told him again. Maybe I can train him with positive reinforcement? “Really useful having someone do that for me. I appreciate it.”

“Glad I could help.” He kept sitting on the floor. Squatting, actually, to make sure I remembered that he’s taller than me. “I’ve been thinking. We need more interspecies solidarity on the Nexus.”

Hopefully not between him and Spender this time?

“There’s too much species prejudice going around. Some of the humans, in particular, have been…” He trailed off.

“What’s Addison done now?” Last week Addison drunk-called me halfway through my sleep shift and ranted about how Tann will DIE OF OLD AGE BEFORE I HIT MENOPAUSE, GOOD RIDDANCE, LET’S BRING RYNCOL TO HIS FUNERAL. Please tell me she didn’t do that to his face?

“Addison? No, Director Addison has been very helpful. But some of the others are inventing new slurs! Yesterday I had four people call me a “dickhead newt guy!” What does that even mean?”

Don’t laugh. Don’t picture a human phallus (you know, the kind with the flappy bit) wearing salarian armour and ordering people around. No, really, don’t picture that.

“Seriously! What does it mean?” He looked like he actually wanted my opinion.

Well, it’s an excuse to take a longer break from worm-wrestling… “Classic case of denigrating aliens by comparing them to your planet’s uglier wildlife. A newt’s a little slimy earth critter, looks vaguely like a teeny salarian, humans don’t like them.”

He narrowed his eyes like the thought hurt him.

“I get toad and lizard jokes from the humans,” I pointed out. “Which is interesting coming from critters that look _so much_ like pyjaks. You ever notice the resemblance?”

He gave me his best Disapproving Face. “Kesh. That is Not Sensitive.”

“True. Sorry.”

He kept disapproving. “Anyway… what were they saying about my head?”

“That’s not a species thing. That’s just your standard… insult someone by comparing them to genitalia… thing.”

“They think my head looks like a cloaca?” he yelped.

“Human male intromittent organ, to be exact, but same sort of all-purpose insult.”

“Human male what?”

“Phallus? Lovesnake? Penis? Prick? Friendly maw?” Is my translator playing up? He’s not looking any less confused.

“Is that part of the human cloaca?” he asked me. “I’m not a xenobiologist.”

All mothers below, bear witness. I’m talking to a middle-aged accountant who doesn’t know what a penis is.

Twenty-eight-year-old accountant. Same thing.

“Er,” I said, trying to figure out where to start. “You know how humans have internal fertilisation?”

“They fertilise _what?”_

Some of us here are making heroic, nay saintly, efforts to avoid negative stereotypes. All hail Nakmor Kesh, absolute master of interacting with aliens without punching them! Others of us… well, I guess it’s hard to be a creepy amoral mad scientist if you don’t know any science?

“Remember the Zoe Kennedy mess?” Hadn’t really been his mess, but it was pretty memorable. “You know how human larvae incubate _inside_ the female? Didn’t you ever wonder how the male DNA gets in there?”

“I never considered the mechanics!”

“Ah. So…” This conversation was still better than the worms! “The eggs need to be fertilised while they’re still inside the female. So the male has a, um, sperm nozzle for putting it in.”

“For… squirting at the female?”

“The nozzle inserts into the female, um, let’s just call it a cloaca. That way the sperm don’t have to swim as far.”

“That sounds so invasive! Doesn’t it hurt?”

“Only if it’s done badly. Mostly they like it.”

His face twisted into a rictus of horror, probably imagining something anatomically incorrect about Addison. “But it’s only the humans who do that, right? Aren’t you grateful our species don’t use… nozzles?”

 _I’m wearing towels._ May as well set him straight, though, and it’s still better than the worms.

“Your species, I’m afraid. Nozzles are pretty standard in the Milky Way.”

“You lay eggs! You’ve got that… farm thing for it!”

Morda’s exiles took all the krogan incubators with them, so once the levos got permission to breed, I’d built one out of something some turians were planning to use on livestock. Hadn’t needed it yet.

I’d smashed my first clutch in this galaxy. Whispered the old prayers for _I refuse this life, I will not let this life become,_ and cut my hand for the blood sacrifice. We didn’t have the resources.

It was months after the exile, so I don’t know if they were even fertilised. And my genes are too broken. I’ve never had an egg develop past a few weeks. But… gene treatments for six hundred years, what if they worked, what if I could have children to teach and love… I’m not that fuckwit Kennedy. We didn’t have the resources.

Then, because this is a space station, I’d had to pour the chips of shell and smears of yolk into the medical waste disposal unit. In the middle of the night so I didn’t have to explain what the hell I was doing. And had to pray over a fucking _waste disposal unit._

On a list of things that I am _not, ever,_ discussing with _Director Tann?_

Be good if I could breed, wouldn’t it, Tann?

No point saying that. It’ll just make him behave worse. He fetched me dinner. When the varren does a trick, you pat it. Paste a happy look on your face. Concentrate on how hilarious this conversation is.

“Yeah, but… hard calcium shells on the eggs, right?” Managed to say that in a cheerful, wobble-free voice. “So they don’t dry out. But that means sperm can’t get in once the shell’s on.”

He was looking horrified _at my crotch._ I adjusted my towels for better coverage.

“So…” I went on, “sperm needs to be put in?” Don’t make hand gestures! “So it can wait around in the… sperm storage chamber… and then it can be put on the eggs before the shell goes on.”

“Why the shells then? Seems unnecessarily complicated?”

“Saves water! None of that sacred breeding pool stuff. Krogan eggs, well, the old-fashioned way’s to just bury them in some warm sand, and by the time they hatch they’re developed enough to feed themselves and use a litter box. The incubator’s to improve the hatch rate.” Couldn’t stop myself glaring at him, but he didn’t notice. He can’t help what his ancestors did, but he doesn’t have to approve of it!

“But… breeding pools are pure!” he told me earnestly. “You need them for holiness!”

If early-stage salarian larvae are badly enough underfed, the big ones (usually the females) grow fangs and start eating the runts. Wonder if he knows that?

“Eh,” I pointed out, “everyone comes up with their own religion, or secular morality or something.” Better _not_ use krogan as an example of why civilisation doesn’t need sacred tadpole pools. “Look at turians. They incubate larvae inside the female as well, until they’re old enough to walk, so they worship a lot of spirits associated with _that_ and with the nutrient fluid thing… heh, I suppose that means they _are_ their own sacred pools.”

“That is a bizarre mental image! …Nutrient fluid? That thing where…” He cradled an imaginary baby, hunched over it and gaped his mouth open.

“That thing.” At least he’s familiar with that. Then again, it’s hard to not notice your coworkers opening their mouths ninety degrees and drooling strings of grey gunk. First time I saw that I screamed in horror and they sent me to sensitivity training.

“Have to confess,” I went on, “it still gives me the creeps. I’ve been trying to desensitise myself with Kandros’s baby pictures, and those videos of him helping out with his sister’s kid after her boyfriend ran off. So far it’s just made me look at Kandros funny, but I’ve got plenty of time before the first babies show up.”

He glared at me for a moment, probably about to tell me that he’d never be irrationally disgusted by alien biology, no, us Citadel Council types don’t do that, but then he nodded. “That seems like a reasonable idea. Perhaps I should start desensitising myself before it becomes an issue. The turians will be so upset that they’re not allowed to breed yet. Did you know _twenty-one_ couples have already decided to name their child Macen? Not to mention two Isharas, one Alec, and five Saras. Isn’t Sara a female name? The turians seem to think it’s unisex.”

“No clue.”

“Wait,” he said firmly. “Turians don’t have these nozzle things. I’ve seen them naked.”

“I assure you, they do.” The amount of unseemly behaviour I’ve walked in on, on this privacy-deficient tin can… at least Calleo and whatserface have proper skin, not like the humans, but did they have to do that on his desk? “Even the females have slightly smaller ones that… aren’t exactly for reproduction, per se. Everything pulls back in when they’re not using it, for protection, and some of the armour slides over the top, same as krogan. Pretty sure you haven’t seen them _naked_ naked, or me either.”

Got a shock the first time I saw a naked human male, I can tell you. Suddenly had a new, visceral understanding of the human everyone-needs-clothes-all-the-time obsession.

He shook his head. “It still sounds appallingly invasive. You’re telling me the females agree to this for breeding purposes?”

“No no, I’m telling you the females enjoy it if it’s done right. It gets done recreationally or for pair-bonding purposes a lot. That’s how accidental reproduction happens in all-diploid species.”

“ _Enjoy?”_ His eyes were appalled slits.

“Most sentient species, the whole sort of area’s covered in… pleasure nerves… which are stimulated by reproductive attempts, among other things. And which tend to hook into the cuddle and bonding bits of the brain.”

“Females enjoy it? But you’re female!”

“Well… yeah?” Oh dear, he’s making that face at my crotch again. Don’t know what he’s imagining, but I probably made the same face last week when I caught L’Kai and T’Charo behind the toilet paper crates. Sure, asari have that… aura of sexy or whatever it is… but it’s not strong enough to compensate for the squishy wobbly bits. Reminded me of a pair of six-foot blue grubs.

Better keep asari out of this conversation – they’re a whole separate topic. Sure, volus… don’t want to talk about it, and elcor and vorcha tend to change biological sex when they feel like it and hanar have medium-sized matching wriggly gametes rather than eggs and sperm, but at least they all use gametes and some sort of meiosis. Asari? That stuff’s just… eh, be PC, Kesh, it works for them.

Tann shook his head and dragged his eyes back to my face. “I’ve always felt that pair-bonds are disruptive to society. Prioritising a stranger’s welfare above your own family?”

“ _Equal_ to your family, Director, unless your family’s such crap you’d rather be rid of them – and don’t tell me that never happens with salarians, half the salarians in the Initiative are here to get away from their rubbish family.”

His eyes went weirdly blank, nictitating membranes waving slowly back and forth.

Wait. Why did he switch galaxies again? He never mentioned.

And I’ve heard enough snide comments about _clanless men, can’t make their own clan, genetic dead ends… a man’s half of a woman,_ they say, and then claim it’s only a joke.

Not that he’s ever mentioned wanting children. Let’s not start projecting here.

What would I even do, if I had to choose between Gramps and Vorn? Have to choose Gramps. All you under the earth, all you above the sky, protect me from having to choose.

“Anyway,” I went on, “the bonding thing’s useful for getting more family. Joining families together.” Let’s hope I haven’t upset him too much, or he’ll probably take it out on Morda. She doesn’t need any more stress.

“I… see,” he muttered. “Your coverall should be out of decon by now. Your actual coverall, not the… creative solution you were wearing.”

“What? Nah, it’ll be hours yet.”

“I prioritised it. It’ll definitely be clean.” He snaps it like he’s giving orders, but… he did that for me? Nice work!

“Excellent!” I told him, and jumped to my feet. “I’ll get right on that, Director!” Maybe the worms are better than this conversation after all. Bet the worms don’t have mommy issues.  
He stood up in a hurry, because it’d never do to have the scary monster alien looming over him, and then he wobbled a bit and tried hard to look like he wasn’t in pain. “And your plumbing equipment should have cooled down by now,” he snapped. “If it hasn’t, the spares are in storage B645-Z.”

Looks like he’s wrenched his bad knee again. Twenty-eight and he’s losing knee cartilage. Probably be needing some cyborg bits himself soon. I’ve got centuries to fix everything that’s fixable. He’s ten years from cancer or decrepitude.

“Thanks,” I told him, and walked out before things got any more awkward.

I’d like to have something to say at Tann’s funeral. Something better than “he tried.”

He cried on Kandros last week. I have no business knowing that, but Kandros told me anyway. Tann got drunk and wailed about _I fear history will judge me harshly,_ and Kandros patted him on the back and told him that none of us are pure and we’ve all done our best. He’s a kind man.

Now Addison, I think we’re going to be working together for a while, so what would you like me to say at _your_ funeral? Shall I bring some, what’s it called, moonlight?

Kandros won’t see two hundred either, or Vetra or Sid or Sara Ryder. They’ll wither and forget who I am and I’ll still be young. I’ll make sure they get good funerals. Put up some fancy statues for them.

Calix Corvannis didn’t see sixty. No statues for him, not on the Nexus. I hope they build him some good monuments on Kadara. I hope half of Kadara names their first child Calix. The history textbooks had better remember how he saved us all. I’ll write them myself if necessary.

I don’t know who shot Calix, but I know who gave the order. Tann was panicking and we were all making bad decisions and perhaps he should be forgiven. Calix was my right-hand man, quick and cunning, always ready with a plan or a joke, and one moment he was cursing Sloane Kelly and the next he’d fallen on top of her… _that’s_ how fragile aliens are.

…Why am I thinking about that? I need some sleep.

Not an option. Options I do have: another handful of caffeine pills.

And some warm soft fresh-dried underwear, smelling of almost-convincing flower chemicals, and a protective coverall that actually fits and comes with a shield for my face.

And half the spare parts from B645-Z.

When I got back, Tann was holo-projecting a documentary on newts over the vat.

“These things are cute!” he chirped. “Look! He’s trying to get a breeding contract by waving his tail!”

Aww, now they’re snuggling! Does salarian reproduction involve snuggling? Not gonna ask.

“Yeah, they are,” I said. “Toads are actually pretty cute too.” Hope he doesn’t look that up, I don’t need him finding out about cane toads. “Director? That was very helpful. Thanks.”

He smiled like he wasn’t used to being thanked. “I… well, you’ve done such a good job. Things have been hard on everybody. I’m sorry they haven’t gone better.”

Haven’t gone better. Yes, you could say that.

Morda would have snapped him in half, if I hadn’t made her see sense. I wondered for a long time whether I’d done the right thing.

Captain Kelly holding Calix up. Kneeling over him trying to find a pulse in the wrong place. Her lips drawn back from her teeth, blue blood spattered across her face. His eyes were half closed and empty.

People remember Calix dying, they remember the mutiny and the traitor or the martyr, but everyone forgets his life. He was the best engineer in two galaxies and he saved the Nexus. That’s what should be remembered, not Kelly painting his stolen clan markings round her eyes and making herself a Tuchanka-style warlord.

I keep his favourite wrench in my family shrine. Can’t do much for Calix’s reputation, not yet, but I can give him offerings like he was my kin. We’re still forbidden to display pictures of him, but no one ever asks why I own a wrench that doesn’t fit my hand.

No one knows what happened to his body. Might have been the yeast vat.

Tann likes “direct eye contact”, so I twisted my head sideways till I had one eye locked dead centre on his little pointy face. “I’ve done my duty, Director. Duty to the Nexus, duty to my clan. Like I learned on Tuchanka.” I’ll work under you because it’s everyone’s best option, and leave revenge to the likes of Jorgal Strux, but you will _not_ ignore what I am.

“You’ve fulfilled your duty well, then, and your ancestors should be proud,” he declaimed as though he knew the first thing about my ancestors. “Thank you. I hope someone who understands turian nutrition is awake.”

He switched off his newt documentary and limped away, and I went down to clean the pipes.

Someday, we’ll have stable food supplies. Someday, I’ll be in a situation where I can fuck up without killing anyone. Someday I’ll be able to leave work when my shift finishes. Someday I’ll get myself an apprentice and teach them everything I know and then I’ll get off this fucking tin can, put my feet on good solid ground, take a job as a mechanic or something, _move in with Vorn_ and help him with his plants, be able to put my arms round him whenever I feel like it. See how often we can get Gramps to stay overnight and cook us dinner.

Someday we’ll have proper diplomatic relations with the locals. Someday we’ll persuade the kett to stop acting like evil bastards – hey, it worked with the turians and salarians! – or failing that, someday we’ll shoot them all. Someday we’ll get the genophage controlled enough that we’ll need contraception to stop us overrunning the galaxy again.

In the meantime? Calix saved us once and he’s not alive to do it again. You out there, Calix, turned into a protector spirit like you always said you would? Or did you go with your team, to guard them from harm? Team probably need you more.

So keeping the Nexus in one piece? It’s my job now.


End file.
